Conceptions about the conquest of America in Spanish public schools: two case studies in Madrid and La Rioja

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of the teaching of America's History in the Spanish school context. More specifically, the article studies two educational centres (one in Madrid, and another in La Rioja) with the purpose of getting to know and understand the conceptions of young students in the 3rd year of ESO about a historical event that is not exempt from controversy at the present time: the Spanish Conquest of America. For this purpose, a written survey was used on a Likert scale (from 0 to 5) for 96 students and on an individual basis. The results revealed limited conceptions of this historical event with positions that are close to the legendary accounts of the Conquest of America, which indicates a limited academic study of the history of The American continent.